


Acclimatisation - The Common Cold

by DeviantXen



Series: Acclimatisation [2]
Category: Class (TV 2016)
Genre: Boyfriends, Common Cold, Cutesy, Fluff, Forehead Kisses, M/M, Precious Baby Charlie, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-23
Updated: 2017-02-23
Packaged: 2018-09-26 10:08:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9885971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeviantXen/pseuds/DeviantXen
Summary: It's day one of Charlie's Planetary Acclimatisation and he is experiencing the human common cold for the first time. It has it's ups and downs but all in all Charlie thinks he's handling it pretty well, especially with such a caring boyfriend at his side giving him all the attention in the world.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of a series, however can be read as oneshot straight up.

**Part Two**   
  


****  
Charlie Smith awoke to the sound of his morning alarm buzzing, telling him it was time to get up and get ready for school. He rolled over and sluggishly reached out an arm to find the button that turned off the noise. Usually after this, Charlie would sit up and stretch and then proceed to get up and begin his morning routine. Today however, he didn’t feel like doing any of that. With his head feeling like it had been stuffed to the brim with cotton wool, a clogged nose and generally tired muscles, Charlie wanted to do nothing more than just curl back up and go back to sleep. Nevertheless, he knew better than to give into temptation. Besides he wanted to go to school, he _enjoyed_ going to school, which was considered weird according to every other teenager on the planet.   
              

The Rhodian Prince managed to drag himself up into the seated position and rubbed the sleep from his aching eyes. The bed felt strangely cold. He looked to his side, expecting to see Matteusz just about managing to process the fact that it was morning, but instead found the space empty. His chest tightened a little. He then glanced to his desk chair where Matteusz usually left his day clothes in preparation for the morning (he was always so organised). They were also missing. Maybe he’d left him? Maybe he wouldn’t want to be around him when he was ill? Maybe human illnesses were so bad that he might die and Matteusz didn’t want to go through that? Charlie was about to panic, until of course, Matteusz himself opened his bedroom door and walked in, carrying a steaming hot mug in his hands, trying not to burn himself.

“Good morning,” he smiled. “Are you alright?”  
  
“I thought you’d gone,” Charlie sighed, shoulders slumping in relief.   
  
“You know I would never leave you Charlie, I just woke up early and thought I’d use the extra time to go make you some hot chocolate,” Matteusz said, slowly approaching to make sure that he didn’t accidentally spill the nearly overflowing mug. He then perched himself on the corner of the bed and carefully handed Charlie the cup, warning him about the heat.   
  
“Sorry, I really should have known better than that.” He gave his boyfriend a guilty smile. The smile became more genuine however, when he looked down and saw a bunch of tiny half-melted marshmallows in the shape of a heart, floating across the top of the heated drink.   
  
“It’s alright. So how are you feeling?” Matteusz asked, leaning back against his outstretched hands that were pressed against the mattress.   
  
“It’s odd, if I try and breathe through my nose it feels like I am suffocating,” he clarified. Breathing through one’s mouth took so much more cognitive effort, like he had to actually _think_ about breathing instead of just doing it naturally. He wasn’t sure how he was going to be able to keep this up all day. Well he probably had to, otherwise he’d might die. “I won’t actually suffocate right?”  
  
“Of course not,” Matteusz chuckled, gently urging Charlie to drink the oozing chocolate. Charlie does, and is met with disappointment. He tried another sip. More disappointment.   
  
“I can’t taste it…is this normal?” He asked, worried.   
  
“It is a side-effect from having a blocked nose, do not worry,” Matteusz smiled.   
  
“It’s a shame, it looks so nice and you clearly put so much effort into decorating it and I can’t even appreciate it properly,” Charlie sighed, distressed. Matteusz sat up to cup his boyfriends face within his large hands. Only Charlie could get upset over something like this.   
  
“Charlie it is fine, even if you can’t taste it, I enjoyed making it for you and the heat will do you good, so stop fretting,” he said, stroking his cheeks with his thumbs.   
  
After finishing his hot chocolate, Charlie got dressed, finding the task much more tiring than usual. By the time he was done he was just about ready to take a nap. How he was going to get through the whole day was beyond his comprehension.  
  
“You don’t look warm enough,” Matteusz commented, looking his boyfriend over. After a moment of pondering, he headed back over to the boys closet and dug through, eventually pulling out a long red scarf, which he then wrapped delicately around the smaller blondes neck. “That is better.”   
  
“Is wearing a scarf really necessary?” Charlie half-complained, tugging at the extra layer of fabric at his neck which didn’t really help the slight already present suffocating feeling.   
  
“Yes,” the taller boy replied. “And one more thing.” The Pol pulled out a tissue from the pack he had bought and went to gently dab Charlie’s runny nose. The rest of the packet was then placed tactically in one of Charlie’s pockets and the other spares in his rucksack.   
  
Andra’ath Quill was sat at the small dining table in the kitchen, eating her beyond burnt toast above a plate that was quickly gaining a pile of scorched ash. Quill liked to make sure her bread was most certainly dead before it came anywhere near her mouth. To her right was the day’s newspaper, which was frightfully boring, as usual. She knew the moment Charlie had awoken from his slumber, because it was the moment that the Arn decided to dig its claws into her brain. Thus, by the time the pair made their way into the kitchen, Quill was positively seething.   
  
“I hope you’re suffering as much as I am, _prince_ ,” she hissed as Charlie sat himself down at the table opposite her. Matteusz made his way over to the toaster and put in another round for Charlie and himself. It felt weird to be so domestic in someone else’s house, but Charlie has insisted plenty that he was to make himself at home and Quill just simply didn’t care.   
  
“I shouldn’t think so,” Charlie shrugged, completely indifferent to the look of pain on Quill’s face. He was never really sure how to feel about Quill and thus decided the easiest thing to do was to feel nothing, despite it going against his very nature.   
  
“You sound funny Charles,” Quill cracked a smirk at the Rhodian’s pathetic sounding voice. It was muffled and nasal and didn’t have its usual pompous kick to it.   
  
“I do?” Charlie’s eyebrows furrowed as he looked towards Matteusz for an answer, as to him it didn’t sound any different at all.   
  
“Another side-effect,” Matteusz said, bringing the buttered toast over and placing a plate in front of Charlie. He sat down beside him. “But for the record, I think you sound adorable.”   
  
“Oh please, he sounds ridiculous,” Quill spat, taking a sip of her coffee. It was her third cup this morning. “Also, Charles, if I’m going to have to suffer at work with this headache and all you infuriating teenagers, then you are most certainly going to be attending school too, every day, ill or not. I want no excuses.”   
  
“I plan on, Quill,” Charlie responded with conceited confidence. After all, he had a perfect attendance record to keep, something that would be good for his future prospects. Besides he couldn’t afford to miss out on any lessons, he was already at a disadvantage when it came to human subjects.   
  
“Good, the last thing I need is that new principle giving me grief about you, when you already give me enough grief by just simply existing.”   
  
To Charlie’s surprise most the day had gone by rather easily. By the time he got to third period History, he was feeling pretty assured of himself.   
  
“So, how’s it been? Experiencing the common cold for the first time?” April asked, having swivelled around on her chair to face Charlie directly behind her. His desk was swamped with used tissues, all crumpled up into balls, just a sneeze away from being scattered across the floor.   
  
“Much less frightening than I expected,” Charlie replied, managing to catch a sneeze in yet another tissue. He then added it to his collection. It was going to be a fun trip to the bin at the end of the lesson.   
  
“That’s great Charlie,” she said, patting her best friend on the shoulder. “You know I feel weirdly proud of how well you’re coping.”  
  
“You do?” He raised an eyebrow.   
  
“Yeah it’s weird. You’re kinda like a little brother,” she laughed lightly. It made sense really, she had been helping to teach him to understand the human world (which was still foreign to him in plenty of ways) like one would teach a younger sibling.   
  
“I would have loved a sibling back on Rhodia, perhaps then I wouldn’t have been so lonely,” Charlie smiled, bittersweet. April mirrored his expression. She didn’t mean her comment to make him sad. It was time to change the conversational topic.   
  
“So lunch, I noticed you actually _ate_ the weird thing they like to pretend is lasagne,” she said. In her opinion, most of the school meals just barely managed to scratch the surface of being classed as edible, it was why she always packed her own. The whole group had been impressed by Charlie’s ability to eat the whole thing without wanting to vomit at the end.   
  
“I haven’t been able to taste anything all day and there wasn’t exactly anything else left by the time I got to the cafeteria, plus Matteusz had explicitly instructed that I had to eat something at least,” Charlie explained, tripping over his words a little as he tried to take a breath while speaking.   
  
“Maybe you start bringing your own lunch from home?” April suggested, playing with edge of the plastic seat.   
  
“I don’t really know how. I even asked Quill once to make me something and she literally gave me a tin of beans without even the courtesy of a tin opener,” Charlie said, doodling a small mug with heart shaped steam coming from it in the corner of his notebook page.  
  
“How about a sandwich? It’s literally just two pieces of bread with something that you like in the middle. Is there anything you like?” She queried, eyeing the little drawing, wondering where the inspiration came from.   
  
“I like bananas…and that red stuff you dip chips in,” the Rhodian answered after a moment’s thought. There was so much human food he was yet to try, but with his and Quill’s lack of culinary skills he hadn’t had much opportunity.   
  
“You mean tomato sauce? I don’t really think those two things really go well together in a sandwich,” April sniggered. “Anything else?”  
  
“Ham and chocolate?”   
  
“Try again.”  
  
“What about fish fingers and custard?”  
                 
By the time it was late evening, Charlie was completely shattered. Quill was upstairs, beating up her punching bag with such ferocity, her punches could be heard from the floor below. She had been at it for the last two hours. Waiting for Matteusz to heat up some chicken soup, Charlie sat curled up on the sofa, completely cocooned in a blanket and marathoning the strange show Take Me Out, which even after five episodes, he still did not understand in the slightest. Apparently this was supposed to be funny, if the audience’s laughter was anything to go by, at least some of the guys were attractive, but not as attractive as Matteusz of course. It wasn’t until said Polish boyfriend called for his attention that he managed to revert his eyes away from the strangely addictive show.   
  
“Ugh I don’t like this show, people judging people for who they are as a person, or just for the way look,” Matteusz commented, sitting himself down on the couch beside the smaller blonde. He would hate to be in front everyone like that, being judged for being who he was, being judged for being gay. It was enough for just his parents to do that and even they couldn’t accept him.   
  
“We can change the show if you want?” Charlie said, picking up the remote and holding it out for Matteusz. He didn’t take it, mainly because the guy was holding a steaming hot bowl and didn’t have a third arm.   
  
“It is fine, if you are enjoying it, then it can stay on,” he replied, turning to face Charlie, crossing his legs across the sofa cushion. Spoon in hand, he scooped up a portion of soup and then held out the utensil in front of Charlie’s mouth, ready for him to eat. The corners of Charlie’s lips twitched upwards in a grateful smile as he let himself be fed the toasty soup. He didn’t have to leave his warm cocoon this way. “My mother always used to feed me soup when I got ill as a child.”   
  
“Do you miss her?” Charlie asked between swallowing.   
  
“I do…but if she cannot accept me for who I am, then there is nothing much I can do than to just pray that one day she will change her mind,” Matteusz uttered. He loved his parents, but he felt betrayed by them. Being around his mother and father made him feel worse about himself than him being apart from them. He loved Charlie, that wasn’t going to change, but his parent’s minds still could and for that, he prayed to God every night. One day he thought, one day they would change their minds. “What about you? Do you miss your mother?”  
  
“Yes…I mean we were never particularly close, but she was still my mother and I still watched her die and that nightmare still haunts me,” Charlie felt his nose getting stuffier and had to rub at it to ease some of the tension. To be the last of your kind was unimaginably painful. It was so painful that it was beyond the point of feeling. It was like drowning when your lungs were already full of water.   
  
“I apologise for asking,” Matteusz quickly said, when he saw a stray tear trickling down the Rhodian’s cheek. Balancing the bowl in one hand, he brushed away the salty droplet with his thumb, not liking it staining the pretty blonde’s face.   
  
“It’s alright,” Charlie managed a smile and forced his brain to wander off in a different direction. “So…Matteusz, what is your favourite kind of sandwich?”   
  
“What?” He muttered, perplexed, not expecting the sheer randomness of that question.   
  
“I was talking to April during History about sandwiches and I just thought I’d ask you because I guess I want to know more about you,” the prince said, drying his eyes with the backs of his hands.   
  
“Well I want to know more about you too, Charlie,” Matteusz whispered. “My favourite sandwich is sausage, sauerkraut and mustard.”   
  
“Can I ask you another question?” The light returned to the Rhodian’s eyes as he heard the answer, deciding that finding out new things about Matteusz generally made him happier.   
  
“Sure. As long as I can ask you one after,” he replied. Charlie nodded.   
  
“What’s your favourite book?”   
  
“The Chronicles of Narnia, they were the first books I read in English and learning English was such a big part of my life,” Matteusz placed the mostly eaten bowl of soup on the coffee table so he could give his boyfriend his complete and full attention. “I ask you the same question, but with Earth books. What is your favourite Earth book?”  
  
“I liked that story about that little duck that didn’t fit in,” Charlie said after a moment of thinking. He hadn’t read many human books yet.   
  
“The Ugly Duckling?” Matteusz cocked an eyebrow, he would have probably snickered if that were anyone else but Charlie who had answered that. But the prince looked so damn sincere about loving a children’s book, as if it didn’t matter at all that it was under twenty pages long or deemed embarrassing for someone of his age to enjoy.   
  
“I liked the pictures and I understood how that duck felt, being so different from everyone else, until the end where he found his own little family that was perfect for him,” Charlie expounded, his eyes wandering around the room. Matteusz thought he was utterly adorable. “May I ask you another?”  
  
“Of course Charlie.”  
  
“What is your most treasured possession?”   
  
“This,” Matteusz pulled out the silver cross that hung around his neck from underneath his shirt and held it in his palm to show to the Rhodian. “My grandmother from Poland gave it to me on my sixteenth birthday. It was the same day that she pulled me aside and asked me to tell her the truth about who I was. It means so much to be because she accepted me for who I am despite being very religious. It gives me hope that maybe my parents too will accept me.”  
  
“So that’s why you always wear it?” Charlie found the piece of jewellery quite beautiful in its simplicity. It wasn’t anything like the trinkets that his parents wore on Rhodia to signify their royalty to the rest of the land. Matteusz nodded and tucked the item back under his shirt so it could be against his heart where he liked to feel it.   
  
“My turn to ask you the same question. A possession that isn’t the Cabinet,” Matteusz clarified. That item didn’t count. It wasn’t something that meant something to Charlie as a person, but rather to his duty as a prince.   
  
“I am not really sure I have anything…I lost everything I ever owned when my planet was destroyed,” Charlie said, trying hard to think of something. The only thing he brought with him to Earth was whatever he was wearing and the Cabinet of Souls. “Do my memories of Rhodia count? I know they are not a thing, but they are the closest I have to a something that is important to me.”   
  
“Yes, I’d say that counts,” Matteusz smiled, feeling the urge to press a kiss against the smaller blonde’s forehead. He went with it. “Let us lighten the mood a little, why don’t you tell me your most embarrassing memory?”   
  
“Embarrassing memory? You won’t laugh at me will you?” Charlie went a little red. Why would anyone want to hear about his fails? That wasn’t exactly sexy. The taller boy urged him regardless, promising that he wouldn’t even crack a grin. “I suppose that would have to be my first speech in front of the entire Rhodian population, I had just turned seven. I was so nervous, too busy trying to remember my lines that I forgot how to walk and tripped on my way up the steps to the stage. I fell face-flat against the ground, hard enough to give myself a nosebleed and to make things worse I started crying. I can’t really remember much else that happened after that other than all these faces just staring at me. I didn’t leave my bedroom for about two weeks because of it.”   
  
“That is so much more awful than my most embarrassing moment,” Matteusz remarked, keeping a straight face as promised. It wasn’t really that funny anyways, if anything the Pol felt absolutely terrible for the Rhodian prince. The thought of doing something like that as a small child, was just horrifying. He knew Charlie was brave, but that was a whole new level.   
  
“Why, what’s yours?”   
  
“I had only been in England for few months so was still struggling with the language. I had made some new friends in school and they invited me to a party for a birthday. They had a karaoke set up and they made me sing a very fast English song. I couldn’t read or pronounce the words very well and it all was very stupid. The others just laughed at me as I tried to keep up,” Matteusz recounted. That ordeal had made him subconscious about his heavy accent for a good few years, but at the same time it also encouraged him to crack down on learning the language so something like that wouldn’t happen again.   
  
“Well I think you speak English very well…not that I can really judge, I knew the language without even having to learn it thanks the TARDIS. Though I still struggle with the ‘s’ sound sometimes,” Charlie smiled a little awkwardly and wiped at his running nose again.   
  
“It is kinda cute when you do that,” Matteusz chuckled.   
  
The rest of the evening went by with the pair asking questions about each other that slowly got more and more ridiculous. The soup had been forgotten about and instead replaced by another hot chocolate before bed. All was quiet from Quill’s room by the time they both ended up in the bedroom, the woman had probably tired herself out. Charlie lay on his side against a pile of pillows, propping his head up with a hand, watching Matteusz rummage through his bag for something. Lying down made his sinuses feel so much stuffier and uncomfortable and once again he worried that if he tried to sleep he might just suffocate.   
  
“Found it,” Matteusz announced, nabbing the item from his bag and carefully clambering onto the bed beside his boyfriend.   
              
“Found what?” Charlie cocked his head to the side.   
  
“Something to help you sleep a little, just lie back,” he instructed. Charlie did as he was told and relaxed against the pillows, staring up at the ceiling and fiddling with the duvet. His cheeks lit up red when he felt Matteusz fiddling with the top buttons of his silk pyjama shirt, popping then open.   
  
“Ummm Matteusz…we’re not going to do _it_ are we?” Charlie shifted a little uncomfortably. As much as he enjoyed doing _it_ with Matteusz he wasn’t really sure he was up to such a thing tonight.  
  
“No Charlie, I think you are a little too worn out for sex,” Matteusz replied, twisting off the lid to the VapoRub and dipping two fingers in.   
  
“Oh good – I mean no offense – but I don’t think me sneezing on you would be very arousing,” he stammered, going even more red.   
  
“Now just relax,” the taller boy said, craning over the blonde and tenderly massaging the substance over his sternum.   
  
“It kinda tingles…” Charlie muttered, enjoying Matteusz soft touch. Whatever it was had quite a strong smell, strong enough that even with a blocked nose he could definitely discern it. It seemed to alleviate some of the stuffiness as well, just enough for him to stop freaking out about being asphyxiated by his own nose. Once he was done, Matteusz pressed a light kiss against the Rhodian’s lips and one on his forehead.   
  
“Dobranoc Charlie, kocham Cię.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed part 2! This got my feelsy than expected...was trying to go for lighthearted but oh well. Part 3 will definitely be funny though xD Poor Charlie. 
> 
> I love comments and kudos! It's making me productive...woop woop. 
> 
> Also I don't have a BETA so sorry for all the mistakes.


End file.
